But Bourgeois said he cannot publicly recant, as his order requires. "What they're asking me to do is lie," he said in an interview from his home in Columbus, Ga. "To say I don't believe God calls women to the priesthood as well as men -- I cannot do that."

In 2008 Bourgeois participated in a ceremony in Kentucky purporting to ordain Janice Sevre-Duszynska a Catholic priest. The church said it was without effect, but that Bourgeois nonetheless incurred automatic excommunication by participating. That means he is cut off from the sacraments, although he remains a priest.

At the same time, a process began to unfold that could end with Bourgeois’ forced “laicization,” or being stripped of the priesthood and expelled from his Maryknoll order, his home for 44 years.

Bourgeois’ Maryknoll superior, the Rev. Ed Dougherty, on July 27 issued the last written warning required by church law before sending Bourgeois’ case to Rome.

Dougherty advised Bourgeois he would forward the case to Rome for laicization “if you fail to publicly recant and retract your stand on this issue of women’s ordination” by Aug. 11.

The Catholic church teaches that Christ defined the priesthood as an all-male corps modeled on himself, and it is powerless to change that.

Bourgeois released his reply, saying “I believe that our Church’s teaching that excludes women from the priesthood defies both faith and reason and cannot stand up to scrutiny.

“This teaching has nothing to do with God, but with men, and is rooted in sexism. Sexism, like racism, is a sin. And no matter how hard we may try to justify discrimination against women, in the end, it is not the way of God, but of men who want to hold on to their power.”

Bourgeois noted that the Maryknolls require more than simply refraining from further public statements on women’s ordination — they are requiring him to publicly recant his belief.

“If I did that I would be tormented for the rest of my life,” he said.

Bourgeois said he has retained the Rev. Tom Doyle, a Dominican priest famous for his support of sexual abuse victims and his criticisms of bishops, as his canon lawyer.

His defense is the primacy of his conscience and his right to dissent, Bourgeois said.

But a friend and secular lawyer said Tuesday he hoped Bourgeois might retain his priesthood, short of recanting.

Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University, said Bourgeois has promised his Maryknoll community he will not participate again in rites purporting to ordain Catholic women to the priesthood — although not to recant or silence himself on the issue.

“An issue as important as this, we’ve got to be able at least to have dialogue without getting kicked out,” Quigley said.

Quigley said Bourgeois has attracted substantial support among fellow priests both within and outside the order, if not for women’s ordination, but for his right to offer his public opinion without loss of his priesthood.

Mike Virgintino, a Maryknoll spokesman, said Dougherty is traveling and has not yet received Bourgeois’ reply.

He said Dougherty months ago slow-tracked the process to give Bourgeois maximum time to reconsider his position.

Having taken a vow of poverty, Bourgeois has lived for years on a Maryknoll allowance in a small apartment outside the gates of Fort Benning, Ga.

For more than 20 years Bourgeois has led national protests against a military installation there once called the School for the Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

He and other critics said the military school for years trained Latin American officers in the techniques Central and South American dictators used to suppress the poor. He has sometimes been jailed for his protests.

Bourgeois, a priest for 39 years, is a native of Lutcher, with a 98-year-old father and siblings still in the area.

Virgintino said that if Bourgeois is expelled, the order will nonetheless continue to provide for him financially.